


lionheart

by theprophetlemonade



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (seriously this is not fix-it), Angst, Brienne deserves some closure to the great love of her life so I'm giving it to her, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Coda, Episode: s08e06 The Iron Throne, Explorations of Grief, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Post-Episode: s08e06 The Iron Throne, Ser Podrick, Spoilers, also, which should be a tag in and of itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/pseuds/theprophetlemonade
Summary: [‘How do you say goodbye to something that won’t ever let you alone?’Jaime would ask her, staring out across the fields, across the sprawl of King’s Landing, across the battlements of Winterfell. His fingers would twitch on the hilt. His eyes would be distant, a quiet desperation in his gaze, constantly flickering, moving between one brief stolen moment and the next. Always meaning more than he’s saying.It’s all she has left of him. Her grief bears his name.]In the days that follow the burning of King's Landing, Brienne finds herself with a sword she doesn't want, and an incessant ghost she does.





	lionheart

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [Ari](https://twitter.com/winterblueskies) for enabling some terrible headcanons. 
> 
> The alternate title of the fic: the Knighting of Ser Podrick.

“Mortal love? Sure. Lovers abandoned and desperate? Sure. Longing and suffering? Of course, of course. You want it to mean something.”

\- Richard Siken, " _Glue_ " from _War of the Foxes_

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Lord Tyrion asked if you might go and see him today,” says Podrick at breakfast. His is the first voice she’s heard in almost a full day, but it doesn’t shatter the quiet that hangs heavy with the ash that seeps in through the windows and under every crack in every door. His voice, instead, is muffled; his words, spoke as if underwater. 

 

When Brienne doesn’t look up at him, Pod clears his throat awkwardly.

 

“I told him I’d pass along his invitation,” he continues, “But if it’s not convenient, Ser … ”

 

In the last few weeks, they have perfected the art of talking without talking. When she first met him, hardly more than a boy, he would stop at nothing to fill every unused moment with chatter, but now he knows how to share her silence and hears the things she says with the twitch of her jaw or the look in her eyes. 

 

She lets him share her silence too. There are few people left in this world she trusts that much; fewer still who have seen the things she has seen and fought the things she has fought.

 

Only one who hears the same ghosts rapping at the chamber door. 

 

Podrick refills her cup with sweet tea, although she has yet to drain her first. The taste is too cloying and floral, but it’s stale too and makes her nose wrinkle. No doubt someone unearthed it from deep within the cellars of the castle, where it had been stored away for the long winter but left to fester in the dragon smoke. 

 

Brienne finds herself missing the bitter taste of Northern ale, but she takes a sip of the tea anyway.  _ If only to please Podrick _ , she thinks. He will be on her case again if she goes another day without eating. 

 

The grand dining halls of the Red Keep are little more than rubble. Brienne has taken to eating in her rooms on the days when Lady Sansa does not request her company to break their fast; more often than not, Podrick will join her, the only other friendly face in a city that is brimming with the weight of the dead.

 

King’s Landing is full of ghosts now. It is a far cry from the bustling, humid city she remembers from the days that stretched after Harrenhal. 

 

_ Those days were so many years ago now. They almost feel like a dream. _

 

She can still recall the colour of the sunlight that streamed into the White Sword Tower, how it glinted across her suit of armour, the first time she saw it.  _ So blue and powerful _ , she had thought.  _ The stuff of songs and tales _ . The smell of the sea had been strong that day and gulls had squawked across the Blackwater and she could hear the shouts of every merchant down in Fleabottom. The thud of the book Jaime had dropped onto the table in front of her had been heavy, but Oathkeeper had been light as a feather in his hands, its hilt gilded and gold against his matching prosthetic. 

 

The silence now has a sword’s weight. She feels it poised above her neck, the bare edge of a blade resting against her nape. The only thing left here are the whispers; no-one dares to talk any louder for fear of disturbing the ash and choking on it. 

 

Brienne tears into a piece of bread and chews crudely; it sticks to the backs of her teeth. Pod does the same, but Brienne can tell that he’s watching her, that he probably knows what she’s thinking about.  _ Who _ she’s thinking about.

 

As if she has thought about anyone else since they arrived in this desolate place. 

 

If it were anyone other than Podrick, she would deny it. She would say she’s thinking about Lady Sansa, wondering if she should’ve insisted on bringing more loyal men from the North with them on their trip south - but it’s too early for protesting. She keeps her mouth shut. Pod would not believe any of her lies; they’ve spent a long time on the road together and they know each other too well now.

 

“I’m supposed to meet with Lady Sansa today,” Brienne grumbles, finally giving Pod his answer, “Now that Arya and Jon are gone, I suspect she will want to return North soon, now that everything is sorted.” She takes another bite of bread and swallows without chewing. “Did Lord Tyrion say why he wants to see me?”

 

Pod shakes his head. “Not why, Ser. Just that he wished to talk to you in private and it couldn’t be done in the council room.”

 

She and Pod aren’t the only people in the Capital adept at saying what they mean without talking. There is only one thing she has in common with Tyrion, and it isn’t that drinking game they played on a night at Winterfell a world away. 

 

She glances to her chamber door; the cold light of the morning creeps beneath, grey and stark, but it doesn’t prelude snow. She wonders if she will ever grow used to it, or if she will ever stop hearing soft knocks on the other side that aren’t really there. 

 

“Ser?” 

 

“You have always been thick as thieves with him,” Brienne mutters. She wolfs down the last of her bread and reaches for her cloak. Pod leaps to his feet and grabs it before her. “I don’t need your help dressing me, Podrick,” she scolds. 

 

Podrick smiles broadly, shrugging his shoulders. 

 

“I’m your squire, Ser,” he says simply, “Lots of things have changed, but some things will always stay the same.”

 

Brienne rolls her eyes. “That’s very wise of you. Where’d you hear that?”

 

Pod doesn’t reply, pushing up on his tiptoes to throw her cloak on over her shoulders. The familiar weight of it is comforting, another layer between her and the outside world. The fur tickles the back of her neck. It shields her from the threat of an executioner’s blade she cannot see, or worse, from the memory of a cold gold hand that was once pressed there.

 

The knock on her door sounds again; she knows it isn’t real. Podrick doesn’t look to it.

 

That’s a memory too. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The Red Keep is empty, eerily so. There aren’t enough people left in King’s Landing to fill it with the life it once had, and all those who do remain have been charged either with cleaning up the wreckage of the castle or with making arrangements for their new King.

 

In fact, Podrick is the only person Brienne has seen all day, and it has been a number of days since she laid eyes on Tyrion Lannister - although she supposes being Hand of the King comes with a number of responsibilities that keep him fairly busy.

 

Still, she knocks softly on his door, more out of habit than anything. She may not be the most inconspicuous person, but it’s a trick learned from her time in Sansa’s service: knock quietly, move quickly, and assume all walls will talk if given the chance.

 

Tyrion does not answer his door immediately, and Brienne is left standing in a silence suddenly very loud and ringing. She has never known King’s Landing this quiet and it unnerves her, and that chill felt along the back of her neck nestles beneath her furs like the press of his hand again. The dead are the only thing that wander these hallways and these streets, but she has one ghost more incessant than the others.

 

He won’t leave her be. Podrick was right.  _ Some things don’t change. _

 

His presence lingers and she doesn’t know why. They were not here for long; less time than they spent at Winterfell together, in the end. She supposes it’s not where she is that matters. 

 

She felt him keenly at Winterfell too. She would hear his footsteps in the bathhouse at Harrenhal if she were to return there. 

 

_ ‘Lady Brienne’ _ , he says in her ear with too much familiarity. Her whole body trembles. She rests her hand on Oathkeeper’s pommel to ground herself, rubbing her thumb through a familiar groove in the gold but dust has already collected there. ‘ _ Ser Brienne, I mean. What? Don’t give me that look.’  _

 

The latch on the door clicks and then it swings open, and Tyrion is there, a frown sewn into his face until he realises who pays him a visit. He offers her a wiry smile but he looks drawn - although not nearly as bad as he had been, that day in the Dragonpit when Grey Worm has dragged him before them all - and his beard is still unshaven and unkempt. It is unlikely that he has had the time to shave it yet ...

 

… which makes Brienne wonder why he has called her here, now, when he must have more pressing issues of state to see to, but he ushers her inside all the same.

 

“Wine, Ser Brienne?” he asks, already walking towards a silver jug on the corner table. “It’s better than that Northern piss, I’ll say that much.” 

 

“No, thank you. I’m on duty,” she says curtly. Tyrion nods and pours himself a glass, red to the brim, sloshing out over his fingers. He doesn’t seem to notice or maybe he doesn’t care; Brienne isn’t sure which. All she knows is that he appears a shell of a man, grey skin and sunken eyes, run into the ground and about as bruised as she feels beneath her armour.

 

Even the golden pin above his heart seems tarnished. It lacks the lustre she is sure it once had. 

 

She looks around his quarters. The Tower of the Hand was destroyed in the sacking of the city, and his new rooms are modest and sparsely furnished. The only items of interest are a large oak desk, the chair behind it, and the red velvet cloth that lies on top of it, shielding something from view. 

 

Brienne frowns at it, and Tyrion notices her looking. 

 

“It’s the only thing I have left.” 

 

He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. There’s a festered sadness in his words, both detached and too close for comfort to the displaced feeling that has existed in Brienne’s chest ever since she arrived in this city. Those bruises she has, they mark her skin in places where she has lost small parts of herself, handfuls of her body taken and emptied, whether it be by the thrust of a sword or the chomping teeth of a Wight or the sudden fleeing of her heart.

 

Those parts of her have been stolen, or lost, maybe. Given away freely in some cases, and ripped out of her in others. Vacuous space exists in their wake. 

 

_ ‘Did you go away inside?’ _

 

Tyrion scrubs his hand through his beard, pinching at his chin, and looks away from Brienne, into the distance. His eyes glaze over, and Brienne imagines the lump in her throat is one he feels most uncomfortably too. She already knows who he’s talking about.

 

“My Lord -”

 

“By the time I was released from my imprisonment, the Unsullied had already burned his body. Not that I wanted to see it again,” Tyrion continues, either choosing to ignore her or not hearing her at all. “The hand too. I understand they melted it down for coinage, and for that, my Lady, I am truly sorry.”

 

Brienne frowns. Her fingers tighten on Oathkeeper’s hilt. “You’re sorry? Why?”

 

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t return it to you. I think it’s what my brother would’ve wanted.”

 

Distantly, she hears Jaime laugh, a low, dry chuckle.

 

Brienne shakes her head to be rid of it. “It isn’t. I never -” She pauses, unsure how to put a torch to her feelings when she never had to with Jaime. That hand was their history, only theirs, but words were never needed to explain what it meant; they both knew, they both were there that night the Bloody Mummers severed his sword hand from his wrist. They both knew what his honesty saved for her and cost of him. 

 

Tyrion looks up at her, his eyebrows raised. The expectation in his face prompts her to be honest, but still her eyes flit around the room. 

 

“I never liked it,” she says quietly. “The hand. I mean, I - it served its purpose well enough, and I know it made him feel better, for a time, but he was still him, without it.”

 

She doesn’t elaborate. The memory is too tender, fire-lit in the nights spent at Winterfell, huddled together in furs with wine humming through their veins, his mouth on her throat, his hand on her back, his stump against her ribs. She had asked him to take it off to touch her; he had hesitated, those walls drawing up before her eyes, but she had insisted. 

 

She didn’t need words then. She doesn’t need words now. The look in Jaime’s eyes spoke volumes enough: a relief and a gratitude and a feeling that trembled through the heart of him as he understood that she wasn’t disgusted by the scar tissue and the marbled skin around his wrist, not like everyone else. She welcomed that part of him. She knew that part of him more intimately than anyone else ever did. 

 

_ ‘You ... want me to take it off?’ _

 

Tyrion seems to understand her silence; his eyes shift from regretful to steeled. A new resolve takes root in his face as he turns away from her and walks to the desk behind him. The chair of the Hand of the King is tall and proud on the other side, but he doesn’t sit in it reaching instead for the velvet cloth upon the table. He pulls it away with a short, sharp tug, and Brienne’s throat tightens.

 

Widow’s Wail. In all it’s silver and gold and scarlet-red glory, a relic of a history whose final page has hardly dried. 

 

Brienne counts back the days since she saw it last, but it’s a memory that burns far colder than the golden hand. Her grief stirs, an ugly churn of her stomach. It tries its damndest to force words into her mouth and she is compelled to chew them. 

 

She can still recall the red ruby in the hilt glinting in the moonlight as Jaime strapped the blade to his horse and refused to look her in the eye. She can still remember the way the night was silent, the air deathly still, the stench of burned corpses still lingering amongst the snows, even weeks after the battle for the dawn. 

 

_ That was almost a two months ago _ , she realises. The night he left. The last night she saw him, not in her dreams, not out of the corner of her eye. The last time he was flesh and blood, him a  _ what _ and she an  _ if _ -

 

She closes her eyes for a moment, clenching her jaw. She imagines pulling all the pieces of herself back inside the shell of her armour, lining them up in perfect regimented order, a battalion for the front lines of a war fought internal.  _ Now is not the time _ , she tells herself, but her palm flexes over Oathkeeper’s pommel, and she remembers the night after she let Jaime into her bed the very first time, when Lord Tyrion surmised that she always touches her sword when she talks about his brother.  _ Or when she wants to cut off his head _ . Tyrion never could be sure. 

 

Brienne lets go of her sword immediately and raises her chin, stepping up to the desk. Her plate clinks and clanks, her footsteps heavy on the flagstone. Tyrion watches her, peering through her cracks, no doubt obvious and telling, but he says nothing. He pulls the cloth from the desk and steps back, allowing her closer to the sword.

 

_ This _ , this is as she remembers. There’s not a scuff on it, not one she doesn’t already know intimately, at least. The scabbard is singed at the end from the night they fought themselves against a wall in Winterfell, and some of the gold on the hilt has tarnished in the cold wet winds of the North, but there are no new marks, no new battles fought with this sword when she wasn’t there at its side, wielding its sister in synchronicity. 

 

Brienne says nothing as she picks up Widow’s Wail and draws it slowly, listening to the Valyrian steel sing as it slides out of its cover. The sound is sharp and clear and noble. The silver catches the light and winks. It reminds her of him, of that boyish grin he liked to tease her with. 

 

The blade is shorter than Oathkeeper; it’s weight feels different in her grip. She doesn’t try to swing it, not in here, because she knows she would overextend her wrist to compensate for its reach, and she doesn’t want to drop it. 

 

On her hip, Oathkeeper digs into her flesh through her armour. It feels like her sword is pressing against her, pulling itself flush against her body, drawing a thin sliver of blood down the length of her leg and desperate for the warmth of it, the stickiness of it upon its steel. Brienne can almost imagine the lion-headed pommel snarling - 

 

But not in anger.

 

_ No. _

 

No, it snarls in grief, in pain, in longing for its sister sword so suddenly without a master.   

 

Widow’s Wail burns in her palm. Scorch marks sear through her gauntlet, but only she can see them, black and blistered as they are, a spasm of dark pain shooting up her arm and into her chest. She’s quick the sheath it, slamming it down on the desk again with a heavy thunk. Her shoulders heave, her breath heavy in her chest. 

 

She has to blink to clear her eyes because she won’t cry here, not for him. Not  _ now _ . It’s been too long since she received the news that the Red Keep fell and him, with it. There should be no tears left to shed.

 

“I have no use for a Valyrian steel sword,” Tyrion says, his voice low. He’s careful not to startle her. She had almost forgotten him there, but he shifts around the side of the desk, if only so that he can push the sword back towards her. It scrapes. “It’s too big for me, I could hardly hold it upright.” He frowns, his smile rueful and mocking of himself. “If I arrived to council with that on my hip, I’d never hear the end of it from Bronn, I’m quite sure.”

 

“What are you going to do with it?” 

 

She doesn’t realise she asks. Her voice sounds small, tinny to her own ears, hardly recognizable. Too vulnerable, too telling. 

 

Jaime is in the room again, having slunk through the open door or crawled in through the window or just apparated as the ghost he is at her side. He leans into her space.

 

_ ‘Don’t look so dour about it, Brienne.’ _

 

Tyrion fixes her with a look of pity, his smile softening. 

 

There’s solidarity to be found here, she knows. She and him are the only two people left in the world who  _ know _ .

 

The real him. The young Knight who killed his King to save half a million people from burning. The handless man who leapt into a bear pit to save a woman he hardly knew and yet knew too much. The man who rode North to fight for humankind, alone, not knowing what might wait for him at the other end: the Warrior, with his honour in tact, or the Stranger, with the tatters of it too torn to sew back together. 

 

The real Jaime.

 

“Lady Brienne,” says Tyrion, and his voice is so gentle that he might as well be talking to a child. He’s abandoned his wine. His hands form fists at his side as he looks to the sword once more. “I was hoping to give it to you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Widow’s Wail clinks against Oathkeeper with every step Brienne takes towards Lady Sansa’s chambers. Gold on gold has a very particular sound; it doesn’t ring, not like steel. The sound is softer, duller, less like a shiver rattling down her spine and more like the slow slide of a knife in between her ribs. It makes her feel malleable. 

 

Ash still plumes in the corridors of the Red Keep. Some hallways are piled high with rubble. A thick carpet of grey clings to the cobbles at dawn and too often in these last few weeks have Brienne’s footprints been the only thing to disturb it. 

 

The sun is close to setting now. She wasn’t with Lord Tyrion longer than she needed to be, but the walk back from his quarters to Lady Sansa’s has taken her twice the time it should have. 

 

She knows these halls. In a different lifetime, she used to walk them, hiding away from the scorching autumn sun and avoiding locking eyes with the Queen. The path to the White Sword Tower was the one she knew the best, the only place in the keep where Jaime would ever speak freely to her. The place where he armed her, armoured her, spoke to her those words that haunt her now.

 

_ ‘It’s yours _ .’

 

Brienne looks down at Widow’s Wail on her hip and nausea bubbles in her stomach. She’s lucky she hasn’t eaten a full meal today; there’s nothing to surge up inside her throat beyond the weak taste of bile. 

 

Jaime gave her Oathkeeper, not this.

 

This sword is not hers. It’s not hers and it shouldn’t have been offered to her because it’s still  _ his _ . It will always be his, it will always remind her of him, it will always be the thing that cleaves her heart in two. 

 

And that’s why she cannot bear the thought of anyone else touching it. A smith melting it down for its good steel and forging it into arrowheads or daggers or armour to sell; a stranger swinging it about their head, striking a straw dummy in the training yard, blunting its sharp edge; Lord Tyrion awarding it to some other nameless nobleman - it’s all an insult to Jaime’s memory. 

 

No-one else knows what this sword has done. No-one else knows how it spared Riverrun without bloodshed. No-one else knows how it looked alight on the battlements of Winterfell against a dying orange sky, like the blade was the thing on fire and not the rust-coloured field ablaze with dragon breath. 

 

No-one else knows how it looked propped against Oathkeeper in the corner of her room -  _ their room _ \- glinting in the dancing firelight. 

 

Brienne comes to a sudden stop outside of Sansa’s solar and sucks in a sharp breath. Her entire body is rigid, a disgust taken root in her very soul; having this sword at her hip is making her skin crawl, but she can’t give it away, not now.

 

It would be yet another goodbye in a story full of them, each one more painful than the last. 

 

_ ‘How do you say goodbye to something that won’t ever let you alone?’ _ Jaime would ask her, staring out across the fields, across the sprawl of King’s Landing, across the battlements of Winterfell. His fingers would twitch on the hilt. His eyes would be distant, a quiet desperation in his gaze, constantly flickering, moving between one brief stolen moment and the next. Always meaning more than he’s saying. 

 

It’s all she has left of him. Her grief bears his name. 

 

Lady Sansa answers her door before Brienne has finished knocking. She looks as prim and proper as ever, her orange hair pulled back into a thick braid that cascades down her back. The dress she wears is black and woollen, too Northern for this Southern climate, even though Brienne knows it’s a choice entirely deliberate. Everyone who so much as steals a glance at her Lady will know she is a wolf in all the ways that matter: she has teeth and claws and  _ bite _ . 

 

Sansa’s stern face softens as she lays her eyes upon Brienne. A stranger would miss the quiet upturn of her lips into a smile. Brienne does not. She welcomes Brienne into her solar with a tilt of her head, but does not speak until the door is shut behind them and they have both paused to listen for footsteps.

 

The Dragon Queen might be dead and the Unsullied gone from the city, but it doesn’t mean whispers are a forgotten currency. Sansa is right to be careful and Brienne is glad of it.

 

“I will return to Winterfell tomorrow,” Sansa says, gesturing for Brienne to sit with her at her table. Sansa folds her hands neatly, and in comparison, Brienne feels like a lumbering giant as she eases herself down into the other wooden chair, her armour creaking loudly and both her swords tapping against the table leg. She doesn’t miss Sansa’s eyes flitting to Widow’s Wail. 

 

“I thought you might want to stay a little longer, my Lady,” Brienne says, “Until Lord Bran - until His Grace has fully settled into his new position.”

 

“Bran doesn’t need to settle into anything,” Sansa says, “And he doesn’t need my help, not for this. But the North does and I have already been away from home for far too long. The sooner I return, the better.”

 

“I will begin preparations immediately then,” Brienne nods. “I’ll have Podrick see to the horses this evening and I will talk to Ser Davos about the arrangements -”

 

“You’re not coming with me.” 

 

Brienne blinks. Her mouth falls open gormlessly, and then she slams her jaw shut. 

 

Sansa waits patiently for Brienne to collect her wits, her cool expression not changing. Her stare is icy blue. Winter blue. 

 

“My Lady,” Brienne starts slowly, “If I have done something to offend you-”

 

“There is nothing you could do that would offend me, Brienne. It’s quite the opposite. I need you to stay here.”

 

“I’m not sure I understand -”

 

“The men in my family do not fare well in the South,” Sansa says, “And whilst I am sure my brother will be a good king, there will still be those who disagree and who will likely try to seize power where they think they see weakness in him. I would feel better if he were to have a sworn sword that he could trust, and who I could trust too. The first member of his Kingsguard, perhaps.” 

 

_ ‘There’s still room left on your pages, Brienne. Just like mine.’ _

 

Brienne feels her face flush; she wraps her hand around Oathkeeper’s pommel again, and then scolds herself for it, letting go just as quickly. Widow’s Wail digs into her hip. It presses on a bruise. 

 

Sansa holds Brienne’s gaze, steadfast snow in her eyes where Brienne’s are as wavering as the sea. She reaches across the table and takes Brienne’s hand in her slender white fingers. Without her glove, her palm is cold too.

 

“There is no-one else I can trust with this,” Sansa says, and she smiles a rare smile, one Brienne knows is genuine. “Only you. And you are already a Knight, so I can think of no-one more appropriate for the position.”

 

Brienne shakes her head and pulls her hand from Sansa’s. “My Lady, I’m - I’m honoured, truly, but with Lady Arya leaving, and Jon - and Lord Snow gone, I cannot let you alone in the North -”

 

“The North is my  _ home _ . There is no safer place for me now and no-one within a thousand miles would dare attack Winterfell again. Your oath to my mother is fulfilled, Brienne. It is  _ my _ honour to release you from your vow.”

 

“At least take Podrick with you,” Brienne insists, “He’s proven himself as good as any Knight, he is a capable fighter and will be more loyal to you than any other.”

 

Sansa’s smile tightens, amusement flickering like a fire in her winter-blue eyes. She always smiles like she’s waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with her. 

 

“I spoke with him whilst you were in attendance with Lord Tyrion,” she says, “I told him that I would be asking you to remain here, and he asked to be allowed to stay too, at your side. He was quite insistent.”

 

Brienne frowns, her mouth flattening into a thin line. “I will speak with him, my Lady, but please forgive his insolence in asking -”

 

“There is nothing to forgive. I would ask Podrick to stay here with you. I would feel better for it, knowing you were protected too.”

 

“My Lady, I don’t need protecting -”

 

Sansa reaches for Brienne’s hand again, hooking her fingers around the side of Brienne’s hand. She squeezes tighter this time; her claws are sharp and subtle. Brienne has seen too many times how Sansa’s goodness bends men to her will, and more so, how her strength has men laying down their lives for her without ever having to ask. 

 

Brienne will not be able to pull her hand away.

 

“I know you don’t,” Sansa says, and her steelclad stare is almost enough to make Brienne flinch. 

 

Almost, but not quite. She’s used to that intensity, be it curiosity or ridicule or awe. She’s been on the receiving end of it all her life. Catelyn, Sansa, that strange ginger wildling man, every brutish soldier who thought she couldn’t wield a sword and every single one of them she kicked into the dirt after.

 

Jaime.

 

Sansa’s intensity is different to his - his was stranger, warmer, nervous and manic at times, desperate and devoted in a way she could never put a finger on - but it cuts through her just the same. 

 

It makes her feel bare. It makes her feel seen, like her insides are on her outsides, and she has no armour to protect herself from a well-placed blade in the places where it will hurt the most.

 

“When I was held prisoner here, all those years ago, I used to go into the gardens and pray to the Gods to send me a friend, a true Knight to champion me,” Sansa continues, her voice soft. She covers their joined hands with her other, petting the back of Brienne’s worn knuckles. “They answered my prayers when it mattered. There is no-one in the world but you to whom I would trust my life, but you are more than my sworn sword, Brienne. You have been my friend too, and I would wish you safe as much as I wish it for my brother.”

 

Brienne swallows thickly. With her sword hand, she palms at Oathkeeper but her knuckles brush against Widow’s Wail’s ruby-set hilt and her jaw clenches.

 

Recognition flickers across Sansa’s pale features.

 

“But if it hurts you too much to stay here, I would understand,” Sansa says quietly, almost a whisper. “King’s Landing is not a place I would wish on many people. Everyone has ghosts here, some of us more than most.”

 

“My Lady, I did not mean - I do not mean to insult your Lord Father’s memory.”

 

“You do not, Brienne,” says Sansa, but her eyes flick down to Widow’s Wail and linger this time. Brienne can see her thinking; she wonders if Sansa is replaying the morning Jaime arrived at Winterfell and was dragged into the Great Hall before the Dragon Queen. Perhaps she remembers Grey Worm thrusting this sword into Jaime’s chest with a grunt; perhaps she thinks  _ so that’s where I’ve seen it before _ . 

 

There’s a part of Brienne, even now, even after so many years in Lady Sansa’s service and trust, that wants to turn her body and hide the sword from view. The weight of it on her hip might as well be the roof of the Red Keep raining down atop her as rubble, but she doesn’t want Sansa to see. She doesn’t want anyone to see.

 

Grief is a paradox. It’s only fitting when it’s about him. He never made any damn sense either. 

 

“I would have you back at Winterfell if that is what you truly want. You will always have a space at my hearth,” Sansa adds, but then she pauses, her face a brilliant mask to all that she feels, well-tended and well-practiced over the years that have stolen her honesty from her. “Did Lord Tyrion give you that sword?”

 

“Yes, my Lady.”

 

“And it was Ser Jaime’s?”

 

“Yes, my Lady.”

 

“It was Joffrey’s sword once,” Sansa murmurs, “I remember. He made me kiss it once. He said that every time he swung it, it would be like taking my father’s head again.” Brienne can hear the hatred dripping through. She pretends not to notice the way Sansa’s grip tightens like a tell. 

 

“I’m sorry to hear that, my Lady,” she whispers. The realisation that there’s more blood on Oathkeeper than on Widow’s Wail is not one she will voice now. 

 

_ ‘Come on now, Brienne,’ _ Jaime laughs nearby,  _ ‘Stannis Baratheon and the Hound hardly count as blood.’  _ His voice turns somber.  _ ‘You know what blood I took? A dozen soldiers in Dorne. All of Highgarden. A Dothraki horde at Goldenroad. And I’d do it all again.’  _

 

Brienne looks down at the two swords on her hip: Oathkeeper threaded through the beautiful red-leather belt Jaime gave to her years ago, and Widow’s Wail hung from its strip of gold-studded hide, the pommel faded in the shape of a grip much the same size as her own.

 

The span of her hand had always matched his. 

 

“Would you protect my brother with it?” Sansa asks then, all ferocity and grace and the brand of justice that has kept her alive all these years. Her eyes search Brienne’s soul, but doesn’t find it lacking. “Ned Stark’s last true born son? Would you defend him with it?”

 

Heat comes to Brienne’s eyes then. Her throat tightens and she cannot speak, not for a moment, not for an infinity. She wishes to push it down again, down into the pit of her stomach where she does not have to face it in the open field. 

 

“I will, my Lady. I swear it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Podrick.”

 

Pod startles out of sleep like a hare frightened by the sudden twang of a bow, almost toppling himself out of the chair he has positioned outside Lord Tyrion’s chambers. He jumps to his feet, his hand immediately on the hilt of his nameless sword. He still looks part a boy - that same boy that stood at Jaime’s side and smiled meekly at Brienne as she insulted him to his face and Jaime just laughed - but he’s a man now too, a brave man, a man who fought for the world of men and came out of the other side just as much a hero as the rest of them.

 

“Ser!” he says, standing to attention, clicking his heels together, “Are you here to see Lord Tyrion?”

 

“No,” says Brienne, “I was looking for you. Lady Sansa is to depart for Winterfell tomorrow. We should make preparations for her journey.”

 

“Yes, Ser,” he says, “Shall I pack your things too?”

 

“No, Pod. We’re not to go with her. Lady Sansa has commanded that we stay here to oversee the safety of His Grace. As he is just as much a child of Lady Catelyn as Sansa, I feel it is our duty.” She pauses, studying Pod’s expression for a moment, but she is not as shrewd as Sansa at discerning other people’s thoughts. Pod just looks confused. “I assume you will have no quarrel with this?”

 

Pod frowns. He opens his mouth to say something, but decides better of it at the last minute, swallowing down his words with a heavy gulp. Brienne narrows her eyes at him.

 

“Podrick?”

 

“Do you - forgive me, Ser, but do  _ you _ want to stay here? In King’s Landing? This is where he - I would’ve thought -”

 

His words trail off, lost between them, though the meaning is loud:  _ I would’ve thought he haunts your every step here. Don’t you want to be rid of him? _

 

Brienne holds her head higher and tries to ignore the clenching of her heart. “I would not let such a thing distract me from doing my duty,” she says matter-of-factly, but when Podrick deflates, the crease between his eyebrows too close to sympathetic for her liking, she adds, in a softer voice, “It would be the same in Winterfell. Perhaps worse. I don’t know.” 

 

“It’ll get better, Milady,” Pod says, and he smiles gently at her then. “It won’t last forever.”

 

The use of her old title softens her heart - she loves  _ Ser _ , for all it means for her as a woman and as a Knight, but it also reminds her of Jaime, and she wishes it weren’t the double-edged sword it has become. But  _ Milady _ , she has missed, just a tiny bit. It reminds her of before, of her and Pod on the road, camped out under the stars, their sole focus finding Sansa Stark and ferrying her home. 

 

Things were simpler then. There was loss she hadn’t yet felt and people she hadn’t yet lost. All that feels so long ago now. She hardly recognises that version of herself in her memories; who she was before the Long Night and who she was after, they are not the same woman.

 

Perhaps that woman was naive. 

 

Perhaps lucky.   

 

“Thank you, Podrick.” A murmur, a mutter. She doesn’t trust her own voice. She turns away, but the candlelight in the hallway scatters across her blue armour and fragments through the ruby on Widow’s Wail’s hilt. It spills like blood all across her hands. Podrick lets out a noise.

 

“Oh,” it sounds like. A single syllable that bounces off the narrow hallway walls.

 

Brienne closes her eyes and wills for strength, for peace, for some combination of the two that is far, far beyond her grasp. She waits for him to say something.

 

“Ser … is that ...?”

 

There it is again. That strange mix of shock and pity. She feels it like a blade pressed flat against each shoulder:  _ in the name of the Father … in the name of the Mother …  _

 

The sword that knighted her is the very sword that hangs at her hip now, makes her feel this … weak. 

 

_ ‘Weak, Brienne? You?’ _

 

Pod stares at it.

 

“It’s exactly what you think it is, Podrick,” Brienne snaps. Too curt, too coarse. It’s nothing Podrick isn’t used to, but still, it fills her with guilt to see him shrink, even now, after so many years at her side. She sighs softly. “It was a gift. Although I am yet to decide what to do with it. One does not really need for two Valyrian steel swords, so I’m told.” 

 

Pod says nothing and she is grateful for it. He glances again at Widow’s Wail, eyes lingering, thoughts quiet, and she lets him have his moment, but it’s all his needs. A moment. He shakes himself free of it, the lion’s claw of it, clears his throat and steps to her side, holding his head high and proud and smiles at her, that cheerful smile of his that fills his entire face to the brim. And Brienne, oh, she’s filled with a sudden rush of fondness for him and for how he sometimes knows her better than she knows herself. 

 

“I will go and prepare Lady Sansa’s things, then,” he announces, “And we will see her off tomorrow. Is there anything else you need me to do, Ser?”

 

She almost lets him go with a shake of her head. Another dismantled almost. 

 

But Widow’s Wail is heavy and goading on her sword belt, and she can hear Jaime’s ghost whispering in her ear, his beard tickling her cheek, his breathy laughter against her neck, hiding a snort. She can feel the commotion of his stare in the Great Hall at Winterfell, the cold flagstone beneath her knees, the way the rest of the world fell away into nothingness as she rose before him and he had searched her eyes for something she could not name, but knew she had to give, because it was him,  _ it was Jaime _ , he was giving her everything she has ever wanted since she knew how to want - 

 

_ ‘Arise, Brienne of Tarth. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.’ _

 

“No,” says Brienne to Podrick, grabbing him by the upper arm to hold him still, “Go fetch Lord Royce’s squire to fix Lady Sansa’s things. We should convene with Ser Davos tonight.”

 

“It’s no bother, Ser,” says Podrick with a frown, “I can sort Lady Sansa’s things and find you after. You won’t need me to talk with Ser Davos. Like I said, I’m  _ your _ squire, after all.”

 

Brienne draws in a deep breath. It whistles through those holes in her, the handfuls of flesh snatched away, the cracks in her armour, the hairline fractures in her skin that she longs to keep hidden despite their sting.

 

She listens for the Gods, but they’re strangely silent, offering her no guidance. Her troublesome ghost holds his breath too. 

 

“Not anymore, Podrick.”

 

“Ser, I don’t understand -”

 

Brienne begins unbuckling her sword belt before she can think better of it.

 

No. No, not  _ better of it _ \- this is the right thing to do and she knows that with more certainty than she has known anything else in her short life - but before she can think at all, before she can remember too much of how Jaime looked in the firelight that night at Winterfell before the dead descended on them. She unclips Widow’s Wail from her hip before she can decide she doesn’t want to give it up after all and wants to carry this sickness against her skin for the rest of her life. 

 

“Ser, what are you -”

 

She wishes she weren’t doing this here, in the corridors of the Red Keep, outside Lord Tyrion’s chamber door in the dead of night. She wishes she had done this the night the dead fell all around them, in the middle of the battlefield with their legs on the verge of giving out beneath them. She should’ve turned to Pod then and there and drawn her own sword whilst Jaime watched, drenched in blood and filth but grinning -

 

But this will have to do.

 

“Kneel, Podrick.” 

 

Pod’s confusion melts swiftly into shock, his eyes bulging wide. His eyes snap to Widow’s Wail as Brienne draws it, and then back to Brienne’s face, and then back to the blade again. He almost appears as if he wants to bolt, and so Brienne tries to remember that look of reassurance Pod had given  _ her _ , that night in front of the fire, when Jaime had given  _ her _ the very thing she now wishes to bestow upon him. 

 

“I would do as your Lady commands, Pod,” comes Tyrion’s voice from the doorway. Brienne looks to him, having not heard the creak of the door. He has a glass of wine in his hand but he is smiling, softer than he had been this morning. “Unless you don’t want to keep your head attached to your shoulders.”

 

“Milord,” Pod says, a tremor in his voice. He looks back up at Brienne. “Ser …”

 

Brienne’s voice is soft when she speaks again. Wisps of memory curl around her words, an echo of those said to her in Winterfell. ‘ _ Kneel, Lady Brienne.’ _

 

“Kneel, Pod.”

 

Pod kneels. He doesn’t clink and clatter on the cobble like her; his armour is leather and his breeches are heavy linen. His boots are worn. One hand shakes at his side, the other is pressed behind his back. He blinks a few times and Brienne will pretend not to see the way his eyes glisten, and then he finds her face again -  _ and he grins _ . 

 

She can feel Jaime at her shoulder now. He prances around behind her, endlessly irritating and playful, a jape tossed over her shoulder, his arm brushing against hers, his elbow knocking hers to seize her attention. 

 

The nausea leaves her. One fell swoop, and it’s gone, just like that. 

 

She remembers Jaime’s smile, the way it lit up his face, his eyes, the way he whispered, “ _ then you have to drink, those are the rules _ ”, and he wasn’t laughing then.  

 

She can feel the cold chill of afternoon snow against her face when he asked her, “ _ they tell me you’re commanding the left flank _ ”, and she can hear the crunch of his boots as he tried to keep pace with her at her side. Her sword hands tingles with the memory of him wrapping his fingers over her knuckles and pleading with her to drink with him at the feast in the Great Hall. Her skin burns again like it did that night - “ _ I surmised it _ ,” he had said, and Podrick had laughed and Tyrion has raised his cup to them, and she had felt more full of life than ever before. 

 

She remembers the way he palmed his sword just before he knighted her. He had been nervous. The most honourable thing he’d ever done in his life, and he’d been  _ nervous _ . 

 

Brienne raises Widow’s Wail carefully and rests the point on Podrick’s right shoulder; she is Jaime now, and Pod is her, looking up at her with wide, impossible eyes. She can sense Tyrion grinning from the doorway, but she does not take her eyes off Pod, nor off the silver of the blade in the lantern light. And it’s that light that dances, and the reflection on the sword forms strange shapes, yellows and red and golds, Lannister golds, and she might see Jaime’s image there, should she look hard enough.

 

The breath she takes is deep, but it unfurls something inside of her. Her voice, strong and bold, echoes through the hallways.

 

“In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.” 

 

She lifts the sword to his left shoulder. 

 

“In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.” 

 

His right shoulder again. Her hand trembles, but she tries to hold it firm.

 

“In the name … of the Mother, I charge you to defend the innocent.”

 

She slides the blade from his shoulder, scraping along his jerkin, and draws it back to her side. The point doesn’t quite reach the floor, the blade not as long as Oathkeeper’s, but she holds the pommel tight.

 

And she feels him there too,  _ Jaime _ , his hand around her hand, gripping the pommel of the sword with her, but it’s not his golden hand. The memory is too warm for that, the touch of skin, the pulse of blood almost real. It’s his swordhand, a figment from long ago.

 

Her hand shakes; his memory holds her still. His thumb ghosts along her knuckles. His fingers thread through hers. 

 

“Arise,” she says, barely. “Arise, Podrick Payne. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.”

 

“Six Kingdoms,” corrects Tyrion. 

 

Brienne glares at him. “Knight of the  _ Six _ Kingdoms,” she scowls, before adding pointedly, “And Sworn Sword of the North.”

 

Pod’s eyes are wet with unshed tears, but he smiles so broadly that his cheeks must ache and he bares his teeth. Behind them, Lord Tyrion starts clapping, a slow, deliberate, proud applause, and he says something in congratulations, but Brienne doesn’t hear it. And nor does Podrick, she imagines. 

 

He looks more alive than she has ever seen him. 

 

And her heart hurts. Her heart hurts so much that she wants to reach into her chest and pull it out, blood and sinuous threads and be rid of it. This grief and love and pride, all at once, is not a sword she can swing or armour she can wear or anything that might be pliable and easily shaped by her sword-calloused hands. It’s wild and unruly and entrenched deep within her soul, but she knows she cannot wish to be rid of it, not now. 

 

Jaime’s ghost nudges against her shoulder, whispering in her ear. ‘ _ Well done, Brienne. But there’s one more thing you need to do.’  _

 

Brienne rolls Widow’s Wail in her palm, turning it towards Podrick, still on his knees. The hilt lies flat against her wrist as she holds the sword out to him, like Jaime did for her, once, with Oathkeeper, and Podrick’s eyes widen once more. He scrambles to his feet and even Tyrion has gone quiet as he scrutinises her. 

 

She does not look at him. She holds the sword out to Podrick, her chin jutted out and her mouth a firm, hard line. 

 

“Ser,” says Podrick, staring at the sword, “I can’t -”

 

“A Knight needs a sword, Ser Podrick,” she says, and the  _ Ser _ rolls off her tongue as if it has been there for years already. In all but name, perhaps it has. “One suited to his station.”

 

“But it’s Ser Jaime’s,” Pod stammers, “I can’t take it, Ser. It - it should be  _ yours _ .”

 

_ ‘It’s yours. It will always be yours.’ _

 

“And I’ve decided to give it you,” says Brienne. She frowns at him. “Take the damn sword, Podrick.”

 

Pod reaches out tentatively and touches the ruby at the end of the hilt. If he expects it to shatter at his touch, it does not, and that seems to fill him with more certainty. Brienne offers the sword to him again, and this time, he takes hold. 

 

It slips out of Brienne’s grasp like the easiest thing in the world. 

 

Pod wraps his fingers around the hilt and holds the sword aloft, catching the light, and those reflected golds illuminate his face and the awe upon it. He tilts it back and forth and the candlelight melds around him, forging oaths for him in the silence. 

 

In his hand, it looks right. It looks like an extension of his sword arm. A knot in Brienne’s chest slides loose, a tension pulled taut through her body left to slacken.

 

She takes the first real breath she has taken all day. It’s the first one that doesn’t taste entirely of ash and rubble. She tastes it like coming up from the sea for air at long, long last. 

 

Desperate, she was.

 

“You better take good care of that, Pod,” Tyrion remarks, raising his eyebrows. His sips at his wine. His smile is knowing. “Ser Brienne has charged you with its care. That’s quite a responsibility.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Brienne stands in the courtyard of the Red Keep just after sunrise, watching as the stewards load Lady Sansa’s things into the carriages and saddle the horses for the long ride back to Winterfell.

 

The dawn is cold and watery, but shards of yellow sunlight sift through the ruins of the castle and are pliant against Brienne’s face. For a moment, she allows herself to close her eyes and rest in the almost-warmth, stealing for herself a second of peace. 

 

Behind her, the wheels of Bran’s chair crunch on the gravel, and she turns to see Ser Davos pushing him out into the sun, with Lady Sansa walking at his side. They’re talking quietly to one another, something which Brienne is not meant to hear, and which Davos dutifully ignores. 

 

Sansa bends to hug her brother then, and Brienne cannot help but smile when Bran hugs her back, a trickle of humanity bleeding back into him that she knows Sansa has long feared lost. And so Sansa smiles, turning away to greet Lord Tyrion, who has also woken early to say farewell. He kisses her hand and she curtsies and Sansa’s smile is a little bit knowing. No words are said between then, but Brienne doesn’t think they need to be said.

 

She knows that feeling well enough.

 

Sansa comes to her next, and as Brienne prepares to bow, Sansa rests a hand on Brienne’s gauntlet to stop her. She draws Brienne into an embrace, the warmth of which Brienne can feel through her chainmail and armour. She pats Sansa’s back awkwardly and waits until Sansa pulls away.

 

“You will write to me,” Sansa says, and Brienne knows it’s her Lady’s last command of her. “I would wish to receive as many letters as you can spare time to send.”

 

“Of course, my Lady,” says Brienne, unable not to bow her head. Duty compels her still. 

 

Sansa’s mouth ticks up at the corners again, a gentle, fond goodbye of a smile. “You will serve my brother fairly and justly, just as you have served me, and my mother before us both. I will miss you, Brienne. Be well.”

 

Brienne watches as Lady Sansa climbs onto her white mare and the horse whinnies. Lord Royce had suggested a carriage, but Brienne knows Sansa better than that; she would wish to ride the Kingsroad and be seen by the Lords and Ladies and the common folk alike for her Stark colours and her Tully hair, the Queen of the North on her way home for the last time. 

 

A part of Brienne will always wish to be by her side, but what Sansa said to her the day before rings true with the clarion sound of absolution.

 

_ ‘You did it. You fulfilled your oath to Catelyn Stark.’ _

 

Those words, but Jaime’s voice. He sounds kind.

 

Brienne rests her hand on Oathkeeper’s hilt as she watches the procession depart through the gates of the Red Keep. The last horse disappears into the city, but still, she idles, she waits alone, long after Bran and Davos and Tyrion have returned inside, and after the sun has risen well into the sky, bleary with the ash and smoke that floats on the higher breezes. 

 

Footsteps echo on the ground, crunching in the stone and dust. Podrick steps up to her side, his palm resting on Widow’s Wail against his hip. He doesn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on the horizon too, but he seems serene.

 

In a way, Brienne does too. 

 

“Ser Podrick,” she greets him with a bare nod, if only to marvel at the way he holds himself a little straighter, now, with just one word. 

 

“Ser,” he replies. He still won’t call her by her name, but he was right, before: some things will never change. “The King requests our presence after we break our fast. He says he wishes to discuss the appointments to his Kingsguard with the new Lady Commander.”

 

Brienne finds herself smiling, a small, gratified quirk of her lips. It feels easier than it did the day before, which was easier in turn than the day preceding that. “Thank you, Podrick,” she murmurs, “I’ll be along in a moment.”

 

She doesn’t move, but nor does Pod, steadfast at her side as he always has been. She watches him from the corner of her eye as he fiddles with the ruby on Widow’s Wail’s hilt. 

 

She narrows her eyes. “Spit it out, Pod.”

 

Pod doesn’t hesitate. “I was just thinking,” he says, “D’you remember when we were travelling in the Vale, just before we found Lady Arya and the Hound? That night we camped just off the High Road, in the Mountains of the Moon? You told me that they forged these two swords from Lord Stark’s greatsword, and now we’re using them both to defend his son. Like you and Ser Jaime did in the battle against the dead.” Pod looks down at his sword and pets it fondly. “It just feels right to me. Like they’re where they belong. Together.”

 

“If you say so, Podrick,” says Brienne. She doesn’t say that she already knows the feeling, already intimate with it. She’s known it since Jaime laid Oathkeeper in her hands, whilst Widow’s Wail rested on his hip. She’s known it since they stood together in his tent at Riverrun and he refused to take it back from her. 

 

She’s known it since they fought back to back on the battlements at Winterfell, twin swords singing in the bitter cold, the left and right hand parts of a song for the ages.

 

Brienne will never wield his sword; it was not made for her. It was made to complement her, to be her shadow, to guard her back just as she did his when the night was at its darkest. She thinks of Oathkeeper and Widow’s Wail as a pair of knighted lovers, sharpest and most splendid when wielded side by side, two parts of one whole. 

 

These swords have known blood, taken lives, killed a false King or two, but Brienne hopes that they might have seen the end of war. They will be used for good now. They will be used to protect a good King, and make new Knights, and for people to swear oaths on. Oaths that will not be broken, unless, of course, they’re found unjust.

 

_ ‘I like the sound of that’ _ , Jaime whispers. ‘ _ Though I don’t think I deserve it. _ ’

 

She doesn’t flinch this time. On her other side, she hears Pod quietly draw his sword, the steel hissing against the scabbard. She might ask him if he wants a new sheath for it, one less broken-in and weather-worn and covered in Lannister gold, but she already knows he will say, “no, Ser, I like it this way”, and she won’t have to ask him any more than that.

 

And so she watches, now, as Podrick extends the sword in front of himself and admires the gleam of the blade in the sunlight, a small frown pinched between his brows. He looks troubled, but Brienne waits for him to talk.

 

“Did Ser Jaime name this sword?” he asks.

 

Brienne shakes her head. “No, he did not. Why do you ask?”

 

“Widow’s Wail. Seems like a bad name for a sword,” he explains. “Especially in peacetime. I was wondering if I could rename it, but -” He glances up at Brienne and she recognises the respect he has for her burning profusely in his eyes, and she knows, instantly, that he has thought about this all night. “If you don’t want me to rename it, I’d understand.”

 

_ ‘They say the best sword have names. Any ideas?’ _

 

“No, I think it’s a good idea,” she says, “What do you have in mind?”

 

Podrick weaves the sword slowly through the air, the edge so sharp that it doesn’t make a sound. He is quiet, too, for a long while, and Brienne begins to wonder if he thinks he’s upset her, when he finally speaks again.

 

“Lionheart,” he suggests, and he looks up at her. “For Ser Jaime.” 

 

_ ‘And for you.’ _

 

Brienne swallows thickly and looks back towards the gate of the Red Keep and the rubble of the city beyond. She stares, unblinking, until her eyes sting.

 

“Ser?” Podrick asks, “Don’t you like it?”

 

“No, Pod, it’s a good choice,” she murmurs, “It’s about time that sword had a name worthy of its history.”

 

Pod smiles and sheathes the sword again, tucking it back against his hip. He rolls forward and back on the balls of his feet, pleased with himself.

 

“It deserves a name worth of the Knight who wielded it before me,” he says, and then he turns away from Brienne, heading back towards the keep. “I’ll see you in the council room, Ser. I would like to go and tell Lord Tyrion the news.”

 

Brienne nods at him and he disappears back inside and then she’s alone again, the sounds of the city held at a distance by the wind blowing in from the sea. She rubs her thumb against Oathkeeper, her constant.

 

_ ‘Lionheart?’ _ Jaime would say, were he here. ‘ _ Really? He couldn’t come up with something less on the nose?’ _

 

_ ‘Shut up’ _ , Brienne would reply. ‘ _ And be grateful. I’ll tell Podrick to unname it if you’re going to be rude.’ _

 

_ ‘How am I being rude?’  _ he would grin, and she would roll her eyes and begin to walk away, slowing her step just enough for him to catch up to her side and jostle her. ‘ _ Come on, Brienne, truly, how am I being rude?’ _

 

And as she turns back to the Red Keep now, she swears she can hear him laugh. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a proud member of the Jaime Lannister is Alive Clown Club, but before I write lengthy fix-it fic where Oathfamily retires to Tarth, I had to write something to come to terms with everything that happened between 804 and 806, so I guess this is therapy. I also wanted to explore the three key relationships Brienne still has, whilst setting them against the background of Jaime's ghost lingering in King's Landing after his death. 
> 
> The scene in 806 of Brienne writing in the White Book was beautiful and gave her some of the closure she deserved, but I personally needed more, and the thought of Widow's Wail just sitting around unclaimed didn't leave me alone. It seemed only right that Podrick - the person left in the world who knows Brienne the best, knows what she has lost, and will be at her side forever - should be knighted with Widow's Wail. In that moment, he makes an Oath too: the anger he had felt at Ser Jaime for what he did is tempered, and he swears to serve his ladyknight justly and fairly for the rest of his days, for Ser Jaime's sake, because it's what Brienne deserves, and Pod thinks Jaime knew that (even if Pod would gladly take Jaime's other hand for all his general Fuckery).
> 
> Thank you to Ari for Widow's Wail's new name. It's perfect.
> 
> Thank you Magali for betareading/screaming about Siken.
> 
> Now excuse me whilst I go wallow in misery. Please drop a kudos and leave a comment if you have the chance!


End file.
